Lawyers for Sumner Redstone are urging a judge to deny the media mogul’s former girlfriend a second chance at having him declared mentally incompetent and are also chiding her lawyers for comparing the 92-year-old media mogul to Shakespeare’s aging, tragic, mad “King Lear.”
Redstone’s attorneys, in court papers filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, say there is no similarity between the Redstone case and King Lear, despite arguments to the contrary by Manuela Herzer’s head lawyer, Pierce O’Donnell.
“But this is not theater,” Redstone’s lawyers state in their court papers. “Rather, it is about who Sumner Redstone wants to act as his agent and make his life-and-death health care decisions in the event he becomes incapable of making them on his own.”
O’Donnell made the Redstone-King Lear comparison in court papers filed earlier this month, seeking a new trial to determine whether the 92-year-old billionaire is mentally sound or is being unduly influenced by his daughter, Shari.
“The comparison of waning Sumner Redstone to demented King Lear is apt,” O’Donnell says in his court papers.”Mentally incapacitated Redstone is a demented Lear. Ailing and easily fooled, King Lear, unable to discern false flattery from the truth, is duped into surrendering his power, land and fortune to his two conniving daughters who ruthlessly implement their scheme to eliminate all opposition.”
But Redstone’s lawyers state in their court papers that during trial of the case that was dismissed by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan in May after one day of testimony, the judge heard from Redstone himself — via a video deposition — that he wanted his daughter, Shari, to make decisions on his behalf, not Herzer.
“Mr. Redstone no longer trusts Ms. Herzer,” Redstone’s lawyers say in their court papers.
O’Donnell maintains that new evidence shows Shari Redstone sought to remove Herzer from her father’s life so she could control and manipulate him. But in their court papers, Redstone’s lawyers also scoff at that argument.
“Setting aside the fact that Ms. Herzer’s new evidence is not evidence at all, but instead press reports and allegations from another legal proceeding, she overlooks the fact that the court made no finding with respect to undue influence,” Redstone’s lawyers argue. “Quite to the contrary, the court expressly stated that it was not making any ultimate finding related to Redstone’s capacity.”
O’Donnell and Herzer’s other lawyers do not “identify any new evidence that bears on the question of whether Mr. Redstone trusts Ms. Herzer, or whether she can serve as his health care agent in the absence of such trust,” according to Redstone’s lawyers’ court papers.
Redstone’s lawyers further argue that contrary to O’Donnell’s argument, Cowan did not have to hear all of the evidence in the case before he dismissed Herzer’s petition.
“Indeed, even in ordinary civil cases courts may dispose of cases in numerous, constitutional ways long before litigants ever get to call their first witness or offer their first exhibit,” Redstone’s lawyers state in their court documents.
A hearing on Herzer’s motion for a new trial is scheduled for July 11.
Redstone was executive chairman of both Viacom and CBS Corp. until stepping down in February.
— City News Service